The greenhouse

So this has been the first summer that we’ve had our greenhouse and I didn’t really have a proper plan for what I was growing, I’ve been fairly spontaneous with what I’ve grown. Our greenhouse is a good size and rather than be too ambitious and try and grow lots of different types of crops in it, I decided to focus primarily on tomatoes. Both C and I adore tomatoes and I love using tomatoes in my cooking. J isn’t as fussed at all about them but when we’ve grown them in hanging baskets in previous years he has admitted that they are nicer than shop bought so I’m hoping to convert him.

I’ve really used left over seeds this year and haven’t bought any new ones, partly as I hate waste and partly as I wouldn’t have a clue which ones to get. You may remember that spring in the UK was plagued by very cold weather and even some snow so my tomato seedlings didn’t get off to the best start. I planted them at the earliest recommended time and we had a rubbish amount of seeds actually sprout. I confess my watering was fairly sporadic and despite the greenhouse being heated the weather probably didn’t help. Anyway, after a very slow start I finally managed to get sufficient seedlings for the greenhouse bed.

Our greenhouse has, as do many others, a sectioned off bed down one side which we have filled with gravel and then laid our compost growbags on top of. Our growbags are in trays which are designed to help provide more consistent water to the plants. Each growbag contains space for three plants and we have a total of six growbags in our greenhouse, 18 plants. I do have one growbag with bell peppers in instead of tomatoes to give a bit of variety. Each growbag also has a plastic stake in it to support the plant as it grows.

I also have two hanging baskets with leftover tumbling tomato seeds in them and a good dozen or so pots with a variety which were fine to be grown in pots. Why so many you may ask? Well I did give away a fair few plants to friends but it seemed a waste to just bin seedlings that had sprouted so I accommodated as many as possible in the greenhouse. I do also have a rouge courgette in one of my growbags, more an experiment to see where they would grow best as I also have a couple outside. When everything was first planted it didn’t look that crowded and in fact I did think at one point that I wasn’t making good enough use of the space.

Well when everything started to flourish the whole greenhouse was taken over with green and it has looked rather wild. I did pinch out the side shoots a bit but probably not as much or as well as I should have but it’s my first year with a greenhouse so I still have lots to learn. It took ages for us to get any flowers on our plants and longer still for any of our tomatoes to actually ripen but once they did, they just didn’t stop. The warm weather this summer has undoubtably helped although it has meant watering up to twice a day.

The season isn’t over quite yet but we have had bucket loads of tomatoes. Most of the plants we have give cherry tomato sized produce but we do have a few giving us larger varieties. At first we were just eating them fresh as they ripened but there’s only so many tomatoes a trio can eat. One of the delights of homegrown is that you can preserve your goodies so you can enjoy that same great taste later in the year. I’ll write once all the tomatoes are done more about how I’ve preserved our harvest.

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